‘Girls’ Will Say Goodbye After Sixth Season

Four years after Hannah Horvath’s parents cut her off in the first episode of HBO’s “Girls,” the network has announced that Lena Dunham and the show’s other creators will be doing the same thing to their audience. The show’s sixth season, scheduled to be broadcast in 2017, will be its last, the network said.

“Lena Dunham and her brilliant collaborators, including Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner, have given HBO a signature series of rare wit and intelligence,” Michael Lombardo, the president of HBO programming said in a statement.

The show grabbed headlines when it premiered in 2012 for its naturalistic take on four young women’s lives in New York City, as well as its graphic sex scenes. Though it initially garnered comparisons to “Sex and the City,” the show distinguished itself early on with its frank (and often less than glamorous) depiction of early adulthood.

“I conceived of ‘Girls’ when I was 23 and now I’m nearly 30 — the show has quite perfectly spanned my 20s, the period of time that it’s about — and so it feels like the right time to wrap our story up,” Ms. Dunham, who created, wrote and starred in the series, said in a statement.

Ms. Dunham became a full-fledged celebrity in the course of the show’s run, receiving eight Emmy nominations for the show and winning two Golden Globes. Since the show began she has written a book, the 2014 essay collection “Not That Kind of Girl,” which became a New York Times best seller in October, 2014.

“Girls” also made a star out of the actor Adam Driver, who played Hannah’s agitated, aggressive and occasionally violent boyfriend. Mr. Driver recently appeared in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” playing the villain Kylo Ren.

The show was both a critical darling and a frequent target of criticism, and would often arouse an intensity of conversation online that was not always matched by interest from a broad viewership. It was lambasted for its lack of diversity in its first season, and has been both praised and condemned by feminists for its sex scenes, its attitude toward abortion and its portrayal of many of its characters as self-interested and spoiled.

“ ‘Girls’ is the crest of a second, female-centered wave of change, on both cable and network, of shows that are not for everyone, that make viewers uncomfortable,” she wrote.

Fans of Ms. Dunham and regular viewers of HBO will not be left wanting when “Girls” goes off the air. The network has greenlit a pilot for a new comedy from Ms. Dunham and some of her “Girls” collaborators. The half-hour comedy, “Max,” will be set in 1963 and will focus on the rise of second-wave feminism.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C2 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Girls’ Creators Announce End of Show in 2017. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe